2150 AD

by Thea Alexander

  Suddenly we topped a wooded hill and began descend­ing into an emerald green valley at the center of which was a sparkling clear blue lake. It was such a captivating sight that at first I didn’t notice the twelve large buildings tucked in among the trees that surrounded the lake.

  “This is our Delta. It includes twelve buildings and ten thousand people.”

  As we approached I realized that the lake was much larger than I had first thought, but so also were ‑the buildings. Each structure was about a hundred and fifty yards square and twelve stories high. They were con­structed of lustrous, but opaque, green glass‑like material.

  I noticed that both men and women were dressed identically in short tunics like Lea’s. They differed only in the various predominant colors.

  Entering the huge building, we passed some young men and women. They all looked exceptionally attrac­tive and energetic.

  Though everyone smiled at Lea, some of them didn’t seem to notice me at all. I even found it difficult to avoid bumping into them at times.

  Then, as I turned to frown at a man who had almost run me down, I had the most shocking experience of my life‑‑a young woman walked right through me!

  Lea laughed and as I turned my bewildered face toward her she said, “Don’t worry, Jon. Some of them can’t see you in your astral body, but they can’t hurt you, either, by walking through you.”

  As she said this a part of the wall opened and she walked through. I followed, experiencing the eerie sensation of watching the door slide shut through my leg.

  The room was filled with strange looking chairs neatly arranged around a large cylindrical container with a curved glass‑like top.

  I was startled to see lying in its bedlike interior the naked body of‑me!‑apparently asleep for I could see my chest rising and falling.

  Lea smiled triumphantly and said, “That’s your new body, Jon. It’s almost identical to your 1976 body except that it has no physical imperfections.”

  “Good God!” I exclaimed. “It’s me‑and‑and‑I’m me!”

  “That’s right, Jon. You are you, it’s you, and I’m you,” Lea explained.

  I had too many questions to even speak coherently.

  “This body is modeled after our electronic pattern and your gene patterns. It’s alive, but it won’t be occupied until your astral body enters it.”

  My mind was spinning.

  “I want you to let go of your mind with all its concerns, and let me take over the operation of your astral body for the next few minutes.” Lea was saying. “Can you trust me, Jon?”

  Looking into those all knowing eyes, my mental turmoil was gradually replaced by desire until every fiber of my being reached out to this girl who called herself Lea.

  Nodding my head, I said, “I trust you, Lea.”

  Suddenly I was as clear‑as honest, as open, as undefended‑as she was. There were no barriers between us. We merged, and though her lips did not move, I heard her voice.

  “We are one, Jon. Let go, and let’s grow!”

  Next thing I knew, I was looking up into her face as she swung the glass‑like cover from above me.

  Sliding to my feet, I felt the exquisite touch of Lea’s hands for the first time as they slid ecstatically down my sides and around my back. I took her quickly into my arms and our lips met as I said her name.

  A pleasant weightiness filled my groin, and I flushed with a new realization. I was naked!

  Lea’s amused laughter echoed amid the conflict between my body and my mind: How could I quickly cover my “bare essentials?” Why should I? And why had I not been concerned with my nakedness before?

  “You’re in a physical body again, Jon,” Lea responded to my unspoken thoughts. “Only in a physical body can one be embarrassed by nakedness. Here, maybe this will make you feel better,” with which she handed me one of their universal tunics and a pair of short stocking‑like boots.

  Hastily donning these, I talked about the room’s con­tents in an effort to divert my all‑too‑easy‑to‑read mind away from what it wanted to think, toward what it should be thinking!

  The sense of effortless freedom I had experienced with my astral body was gone now that it was surrounded by this dense physical body. It was, however, a gem of health and energy, with magnificent strength and coordination.

  The tunic fitted perfectly and moved with my body like a second skin.

  Though it had been colorless before I put it on, it now radiated a basic blue‑gray tone with iridescent rays of orange, pink, and a little bit of blue, yellow, and green here and there.

  Lea addressed my amazement explaining that their universal garment was, in fact, quite colorless until it entered someone’s life field. This, she added, was the electrical pattern unique to each individual which emanates from the physical body he is inhabiting at the time. The tunic acts like a million tiny lenses reflecting and magnifying the colors of that personality’s life field or aura.

  She went on to explain that there are ten basic predominant colors reflected by the tunics, and that these colors correspond with the person’s level of awareness at the time.

  The basic grayness reflected by my tunic indicated the beginning level of Macro awareness.

  Before I could ask any of the hundred questions that whirled through my mind, she told me that C.I. would answer any and all of my questions and that we’d best get going, since my time was limited.

  C.I. occupied the top six floors of this huge building. We entered what appeared to be a shaft of light about four feet in diameter, which Lea called a void. A slight jump took us from the first to the twelfth floor almost instantly. I could see, though, that it would take me a while to adapt to this unusual means of transport.

  C.I. contained a thousand soundproof rooms ten feet square, each of which was equipped for what appeared to be a full wall video tape presentation on any subject one cared to ask about.

  We sat in large comfortable chairs that automatically adjusted themselves to our bodies.

  Lea touched a small white circle on the arm of her chair, and a pleasant female voice said, “Central Information. May I help you?”

  “What are the dimensions of the Delta 927 Lake?” Lea inquired.

  A large map of the lake appeared on the wall and we were told that the lake of Delta 927 was approximately eight kilometers long, five kilometers wide, and had an average depth of ten meters.

  Lea, sensing my mental calculations, asked for equivalents in miles and yards. Gaining this, she said, “I must leave you now.”

  “Leave?” I asked, and came to my feet, totally unable to believe what I had heard.

  “Yes, Jon. I have to go now,” she replied calmly.

  I was beside her in an instant.

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “No, that’s not possible, Jon. It’s extremely important that you stay right here with C.I. and learn as much as you can, as fast as you can. C.I. can help you do that much better than I.”

  “When will you be back, then?” I asked.

  “I won’t be back, Jon.”

  “What do you mean? You can’t just get up and go when we’ve only just met. I’ll come with you,” I insisted.

  “As much as I’d like that, it’s neither practical nor possible,” was her reply.

  “I don’t understand, Lea. Why can’t I go with you?”

  “It’s critically important that you stay here and grow as fast as you can. My presence would be a distraction, and we can’t afford that risk.

  “Let me try to explain, Jon, but I must be very brief and you must wait for further details until our next meeting, should there be one.”

  “What do you mean, ‘should there be one’?” I interrupted.

  “Please, Jon, trust me. Believe me when I say that we must use our time as best we can. I want to stay with you as much as you want me to stay, but that’s not at all practical.

  “I don’t know whether I will see you again, or, if so, when. We w
ill attempt another time translation, but we don’t know whether it will succeed or not. So you can see that there is no way for me to tell you whether or not we will meet here again.

  “This I do know, that the more time you spend talking with me, the less time you will have with C.I., and the less chance we will have of completing another successful time translation,” Lea explained hurriedly.

  “How can you be so calm about it?” I said. “How can you just say goodbye and walk away knowing we may never meet again?”

  “We are together always, Jon. I am never far from you. Your dreams of me are real‑a valid reality‑not just fantasy or wish fulfillment. Believe me, Jon, I am always with you. True, I miss your touch, your voice, the joys shared on a physical level, but they will be there, if not in this lifetime, in another,” she added. “What is, is perfect for its time and place. Accept that joyously, Jon, and enjoy growing your way toward what you desire.”

  “But I don’t,” I began.

  She put her finger to her lips to quiet me.

  “When you fall asleep here, your other body, back in 1976, will awaken, hopefully remembering everything you’ve experienced here in 2150 and believing in its reality‑its validity.”

  “But Lea—”

  “Please, Jon. Just ask C.I. We must make every minute count if we’re to have even a chance of seeing one another again in this ‘time’,” she said quickly.

  Then, gently touching my face, she hesitated for a moment, as her incredible eyes poured forth into mine love, joy, pain, tragedy, acceptance, and peace.

  “‘Bye for now,” she said warmly, almost to herself, and left me alone with C.I.

  Forcing myself to trust, believe, and act on what she had said, I began asking questions, but each question seemed to lead to another. I became fascinated with this magnificent learning technique.

  To be able to both see and hear the answers to my inquiries was a tremendous advantage I. compared it to my usual 1976 research procedures. I remembered the long waits in the library for materials from the stacks, the frustration at being told that pertinent volumes were already checked out by someone else or were never available in the first place. And there were the seemingly endless hours of reading through tomes of academically contrived chaff sifting out the wheat to be found floating there on seas of pedantic verbosity.

  For the next three hours I sat spellbound, soaking up information about 2150, and learning more and faster than ever before in my life.

  C.I. informed me that it had an almost unlimited number of data banks filled with information on every subject man has ever experienced. When I asked how this was possible, C.I. began describing technological processes so advanced and complex that I interrupted, afraid of spending my allotted time unwisely.

  C.I. addressed my level of understanding by explaining that its own beginnings were represented by a learning device designed for use‑in the ‘70s and called Computer Administered Instruction (C.A.I.).

  My interest intensified. I had heard of C.A.I., but I had never experienced it, so I decided to test C.I.’s ability on a subject I knew more about‑myself!

  C.I. began, “You entered this lifetime on September 12, 1948, the only child of Ben and Jessica Lake. Your father was the town physician, your mother the librarian, prior to her marriage to Dr. Lake. On your first day in school you met Karl Johnson, who was to become your best friend. After the death of your mother during your second‑grade experience, and the death of Karl’s father two years later, not; Karl became your stepbrother the summer before you entered junior high school.”

  “You tutored Karl through school, and he returned the favor by getting you out of social jams which you seemed to have a propensity for. Take the homecoming dance during your senior year, for example. Even as Most Valuable Player on your football team, which you were voted that year, you couldn’t take both Jan and Valerie as your date to the same dance‑and you did promise them both. Thanks to Karl, you were saved again.”

  C.I. went on, “There were some things that even Karl couldn’t handle, though, like Valerie’s pregnancy. That was the only time your father ever cursed at you. He didn’t like the idea of aborting a pregnancy, but he had a strong conviction that no one has a right to create a child that he is not both, psychologically and financially able to care for. That lesson in sexual responsibility was dearly paid for by you, by Valerie, and by your father. Fortunately, you learned it well.”

  “This and other hard‑earned lessons left you with a relatively effective life philosophy which helped both you and Karl throughout your college careers. Karl, if you recall, was quite a rebel. He was constantly fighting, “. . . the ridiculous nature of most school subjects,” or “. . . that monumental madness called the Vietnam War.” You were the calming influence, reminding him that what is wrong for one person may be totally right for another. And that each person can only learn when he is ready to learn. Your position that professors are just the victims of their own psychological needs and their own limiting belief systems never fitted quite right with Karl. He always felt it was the students who are the victims.”

  “After your degrees in philosophy and psychology, respectively, you and Karl were drafted and within a very few months landed in Vietnam. There you served together until that final patrol where your platoon was destroyed. Karl used the one eye he had left to find his way back through miles of jungle with you, on his back, unconscious, and minus your right leg.”

  “Karl was as bitter about your injury as he was about his own, perhaps more so. You, on the other hand, felt that this was your karma and that, sad as it might be, it was necessary for your growth during that lifetime.

  “While you, too, felt that the Vietnam War was a mistake from the start, you had by that time accepted a philosophy which held that truth is subjective and that whatever a person believes is true, is true for him. This, you felt, required you to ‑ respect the right of each individual to believe whatever he wanted to. You could not condemn him for acting on that belief even though you disagreed with it.

  “It was this very philosophy that led you to sacri­fice your own leg rather than destroy another person.

  “It was also this philosophy that got you involved in the Ph.D. dissertation that you and Karl are now writing on the development of values and self‑esteem in children. And it is that philosophy, which provided the first link in the time translation path to bring you here to 2150 for whatever period of time is possible. But you can talk it better than you can practice it, Jon.

  “If you’re satisfied with the accuracy of our data banks, we can go on to examine other significant lifetimes. If not, we can get far more specific regarding your present life‑such as‑“

  “Wait a minute!” I interrupted. “I’ve read a little about reincarnation, but what do you mean by ‘significant’ other lives?”

  “Yes, we know that you’re familiar with what your age calls the theory of reincarnation and what, within your concept of time, you refer to as ‘past lives.’ Here in 2150 it is no longer considered a theory, it’s a fact, though it’s based on a very limited basic assumption regarding time.

  “If you wish, we can provide you with information on as many of your ‘past’ lifetimes as you would like to remember. We suggest that you limit this exploration to include only significant lives, meaning those whose lessons pertain specifically to the challenges of your present life. We would like you to keep in mind, however, that all these lives are, from a broader point of view, occurring simultaneously.”

  Juggling priorities, I asked about 2150’s concept of time and got totally lost in the details of C.I.’s doubtless excellent, but very complex, presentation of their metric time system. So I changed the subject enough to, hopefully, bring answers to within my comprehension.

  “I don’t understand how you could tell me about my present life, much less about my past ones, or, if I understood you correctly, some of my future lives,” I puzzled.

  “We have obtained in
formation about you in two ways,” C.I. explained. “First, from your own subconscious mind, and secondly, from the universal mind in which is recorded everything that is happening, everything that ever has happened, and everything that ever will happen to your immortal mind. The system is very similar to that used by our C.I. data banks. Most of the data is now available to us, though we’re still establishing electromolecular‑what you would think of as telepathic‑for some of it.”

  “But how do you have access to my immortal mind?” I asked.

  “You are sitting in a chair that provides us an electromolecular connection to all your memories as well as all emental* and physical data on your body right down to the sub‑atomic level. However, since one of your twin souls, Lea, has a mind structure identical to your own, everything about either of you is recorded in both your mind and hers. We have this ‘telepathic’ connection to the mind of every member of the Macro society. This establishes a partial connection to the macrocosm.”